Deborah Harkness Quotations

The plain truth is that the period I study is the 16th century, and they were absolutely obsessed with witches and spiritual beings.

You do angry. I just saw it. And you left at least one hole in my carpet to prove it.

Wordlessly I looked back at him, astonished that a kiss on the palm could be so intimate.

The king just sits there, moving one square at a time. The queen can move so freely. I suppose I’d rather lose the game than forfeit her freedom.

That evening, rowing on the quiet river as sunset turned to dusk, I saw an occasional smoky smudge on the towpath, always slightly ahead of me, like a dark star guiding me home.

My experiences thus far had me planning to throttle the first Tudor historian I met upon my return for gross dereliction of duty.

Be still,” he said, voice harsh. “I might not be able to control myself if you step away.

I'd studied 16th century science and magic. I thought it was strange that people were interested in the same kinds of things my research was about. The more I thought about it, the more intriguing it became and pretty soon I was writing a novel about a reluctant witch and a 1500-year-old vampire.

Remember the past - and await the future.

Pamela Smith and Benjamin Schmidt have gathered together a wide-ranging and provocative set of original essays that successfully demonstrate how contingent the process of making knowledge was during a period of fundamental epistemological change. This is a finely crafted and conceptualized collection.